This invention relates to catalog searching by software application agents.
Businesses and individuals often rely on catalogs to determine what products or services may be obtained from a particular supplier, and to receive information (such as price, available colors and styles, etc.) about those products and services. Electronic catalogs provide a number of advantages for companies that wish to provide information about their products and services to potential customers. For example, electronic catalogs can be updated and distributed more easily than can paper catalogs. Electronic catalogs can also provide automated searching capabilities so that customers can more readily find the information they seek.
Each supplier generally produces its own catalog, and each of these catalogs may be formatted in a different manner than other catalogs. Also, a catalog may contain information not contained in other catalogs for similar products or services. Therefore, it can be difficult for a potential customer who is trying to find a product but is not focused on a single supplier, to receive concise, usable information about the product, especially where the information comes from a number of vendors.